by John B. Cobb, Jr.
Let me first add my welcome to the others you have received. We are truly glad that you have come to talk with us about education. I have not entitled this presentation “Why Education?” If we understand education broadly, it is an essential part of human life and even of much other animal life as well. Wherever behavior is not determined genetically, one generation must educate the next generation, that is, teach it the skills or provide it the information needed to function. This is certainly true for all human beings, since one of our most distinctive characteristics is a long childhood.
But schools are another matter. Human beings got along without any such institutions for hundreds of thousands of years. Until a couple of hundred years ago most people almost everywhere on the planet still got along without schools. Some people still do.
In the modern world, it has been largely taken for granted that schools are a good thing and that the more people go to school the better. Most governments now require that parents send their children to school. In the United States, homeschooling is permitted, but certainly not encouraged, and parents are required to cover the same topics that the schools do, and in much the same way.
Furthermore, schooling is so highly prized, that most people think the longer people go to school the better. Basically, it is now mandatory that everyone get a high school education. There is strong encouragement to continue schooling through at least two more years. And four year college degrees are highly recommended for almost everyone. Only “graduate study” remains a quite free choice.
These assumptions are so deeply rooted in most parts of the world that the discussion about education is usually about how to improve schools. The more radical discussants sometimes challenge some of the goals of contemporary schooling. Most of the discussion is about how better to achieve these goals.
Postmodern thinkers, on the other hand, question modern assumptions and institutions. So we ask: why should the public support schools? What do we expect of them that is so important? Do they provide this? Are they the best way of accomplishing this goal? Does society have other needs that might be more important? Would schools be the best instrument for meeting these other needs?
I. Some Comments on the History of Schooling
Often the best way to gain a perspective for serious questioning of what is currently established is to view matters with a sweep of history. I will certainly not attempt a history of schooling this morning, but I will offer a few broad generalizations about what has happened in the West. Many of you know much more than I about what has happened in China; so I will not hazard any assertions about that. But it is my impression that the present system of schooling in China reflects the history of Western schools more than the history of education in China.
Most people in most cultures did not need schooling until recently. They learned how to function and become responsible members of society in their families, by participation in community rituals, and often through apprenticeships. Most people did not need to know how to read or write.
However, once cities appeared, written records and communication became important. Accordingly, society needed some people to be literate. Literacy could be learned from tutors, but as the number of persons needing this skill increased, something like schooling became an efficient means of teaching.
The need for literacy was often connected with religion. Part of the prestige and mystique of priests was their access to information not available to most. Writing could make this information grow beyond what memory had previously made possible.
Governments needed legal systems and administrative bureaucracies, and these needed written records. As commerce grew, merchants also needed written records. Hence literacy became more important. And with the need for literacy there was a need for teachers. Collective teaching led to schools.
For these reasons the history of schools is almost coterminous with that of civilization. Although only a few people attended schools, they played an important role. Western civilization sees its origins chiefly in Israel and Greece; so I will hazard a few generalizations about them.
In Israel the religious development led to the emergence of synagogues. To be religiously serious one needed to know what God required of one. This information was not transmitted in the temple in Jerusalem but in local gathering places. One could gain instruction in the law without reading the documents for oneself, but the ability to study on one’s own was prized. Schooling in the law including learning how to read it for oneself, became valuable for people beyond the limits of their special role in society. The leaders in local communities and their synagogues were called teachers, that is, rabbis.
A similar development occurred through the Protestant Reformation. During the Middle Ages, the priests were schooled, but most lay people were not. The Roman Catholic Church felt that it could maintain its unity and authority best by leaving knowledge of scripture in the hands of those it schooled. Within the church there were those who wanted people to have direct access to the scriptures. They thought that the church abused this monopoly and deceived its lay members as to the real message of God. Large segments of the Christian population split from the Catholic Church in protest. These Protestants translated the bible into the languages used by lay people and developed schools to teach men to read.
In Athens, politics, rather than religion, was the driving force. The development of democracy called for literacy among all citizens. Of course, in fact, the citizens who participated in government were far from the majority of the population. Women and slaves were excluded. Nevertheless, democracy, like some forms of religion, widened the need for literacy beyond job related concerns.
Because decisions were made through public debate and voting, skill in debating and the ability to persuade gained great importance. Power depended on the ability to sway the public in speeches, and a class of teachers called “sophists” arose to teach rhetoric to ambitious young men. This, in turn, led to critics of rhetoric, who called for seeking wisdom rather than power, and philosophy was born. Schools developed around both sophists and philosophers.
The Greeks also developed a broader curriculum called the “liberal arts.” This expressed their pride in their culture and concern to pass it on from generation to generation. Unlike the study of God’s law in Israel and of rhetoric in Athens, the study of the liberal arts suggested that schools might be of importance simply for the development of the human capacity for cultured life.
Although the Medieval church did not favor universal literacy it did create great universities. For the elite it continued or renewed the liberal arts. In addition it developed elaborate programs for professional study beyond the liberal arts. The professionals were clergy, lawyers, teachers, and doctors. It was understood that each of these groups were to be respected for their expertise and given autonomy within society. That is, for example, doctors were expected to set the standards for medical practice and to enforce these standards. They were not to be controlled by either political or economic powers or institutions. The function of higher education was to produce and sanction these professions.
The Medieval vision of the university endured far into modern times. Indeed, down through the eighteenth century the universities founded in the Middle Ages were typically the most prestigious. One thinks of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris. Liberal arts colleges grew up all over the United States, often established by churches. Some of them developed into universities largely by supplementing the liberal arts education with postgraduate professional study.
In the United States, education for professionals was supplemented by the public school movement. This combined the Hebrew/Protestant concern for reading the holy scriptures with the democratic concerns of Greece. Literacy was needed, but especially in the nineteenth century there was urgent need to make American citizens out of immigrants from many countries. This included insuring that English was the national language, but citizens needed to internalize American history of a self-glorifying sort. They also needed to understand the nature of American political institutions and how to participate in them. One must judge that public schools largely succeeded in producing out of persons from many ethnic backgrounds a nation of patriotic Americans who believed in American exceptionalism.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the understanding of schools in the United States was dominated by public schools for children and church-related liberal arts colleges and other schools preparing college graduates for the professions. Of course, there were others: private schools for the elite and public colleges, for those who could not pay the tuition required by the church-related ones. There were in fact many other colleges devoted to preparing people for particular types of work: teacher’s colleges and agriculture and mining schools, for example.
Meanwhile in Europe the quest for knowledge for its own sake had produced at Berlin what is sometimes called the first “modern” university. Gone were the liberal arts as well as any form of preparation for jobs. The task of the university was to support the acquisition of new knowledge. Its goal was to promote research. To accomplish this it began to define Wissenschaften, or academic disciplines, within which there was agreement among scholars on methods and subject matter making possible collaborative work to push back the frontiers of knowledge.
These universities research universities gained the greatest prestige, and in the United States universities expanded their “graduate programs,” now sharply distinguished from their professional schools, following this model. These gave the PhD degree. This degree was earned by doing research normally within the parameters of one academic discipline.
II. What Went Wrong?
Up to this point everything I have described makes sense to me. Schools had understandable social functions or at least personal ones. There was no pressure on people to go to school just for the sake of completing more years of schooling. But I turn now to how schooling became absurd.
First, the PhD degree was earned by demonstrating the ability to do research. The ability to do research has its value. If the PhD degree were the gateway to doing research in the field in question, it would make sense. In a few instances this is what happens. It makes good sense that there should be some institutions preparing people to do research in clearly defined specialties.
However, second, the PhD degree became the license to teach in college. The colleges in which one was preparing to teach were not research institutions. They were, at that time, liberal arts colleges. The purpose of these colleges was to teach what would help people to live a good life in society and participate in its culture. Ideally, graduates of these colleges would be community leaders who set standards of morality and taste. Very few of them would become specialized researchers. The use of a degree designed for a different purpose as the authorization to teach liberal arts was the first step in the self destruction of schooling.
Now some people who earned their right to teach in a college by demonstrating their ability to do research turned out to be excellent teachers in liberal arts colleges. They were prepared to adjust their teaching to what was needed by their students. But this result was in spite of the way they earned their credentials, not fostered by it. The majority of people who got PhD degrees were socialized into thinking that the purpose of higher education was to prepare people to do research. Increasingly the courses in liberal arts colleges ceased to be liberal arts and became introductions to a variety of academic disciplines organized for the sake of research.
Liberal arts colleges were caught in a system that was not of their own making. They needed some standard of excellence in the selection of their teachers, and the PhD was the only one available. They had to hire teachers who were not prepared to teach liberal arts. But they were not innocent bystanders. They participated in their own demise. In their quest for reputation, they rewarded those teachers who stood well in their guilds because of their research. They gave less credit to good liberal arts teaching.
The long-term result was that “liberal arts” colleges taught less and less liberal arts. More and more of the best students studied academic disciplines in preparation for pursuing them further at the graduate level. Less and less did a college education prepare one for life and social leadership. More and more it prepared one for graduate specialization and research. The alternative was to take programs leading toward professional schools. These schools also established admission requirements in terms of familiarity with academic disciplines rather than cultural development.
I have emphasized the circular character of the system. Giving PhDs to those who did research led to teachers who held research before their students as the highest goal. Because there was obviously no need for a vast number of researchers in academic fields, colleges also prepared people for professional schools. In the latter case, this preparation ceased being the development of cultivated persons and became introduction to the disciplines that the professional schools deem important. If we consider research as one of the professions, we can say that what used to be liberal arts colleges have largely become pre-professional schools. These professions are no longer autonomous guilds of cultivated persons who are able to guide society and govern themselves. They are now groups of skilled specialists who work for whoever pays them best.
It is my judgment that a great deal has been lost in these changes. Nevertheless, this kind of schooling continues to have a social function. The problem is that the schooling that prepares people for professions is taken as the norm and ideal for everyone, whereas most of the jobs in a society do not require this kind of preparation. Pre-professional specialized study in academic disciplines created for research has usefulness for certain purposes. If it is recognized as such, and other types of education are recommended for those not seeking to enter these professions, I would not call the system absurd. Schools of this sort have a role to play in an economistic society.
Let us review the situation. College education is held up as the proper preparation for the good life in our society. Young people are told that their economic status in society is improved by such education. The normative form of college education is preparation for research. Hence this form of education is sought by most. Yet only a small part of the work needed for society to function makes use of the skills taught in these colleges. Accordingly many college graduates can support themselves only by doing work that they could have done just as well without having gone to college. Good sense seems to indicate that pre-professional programs should be recommended only to those who are likely to enter professions. Others should go directly from high school into the workforce or get further schooling of a different sort.
Now notice that if colleges still taught the liberal arts, this problem would not arise. In principle the study of the liberal arts is for the sake of a fuller and richer life and improved ability to give leadership in society. One can sensibly argue that the more people having this experience the better. Fortunately, many colleges have not totally lost these humanizing functions. However, most students are encouraged to go to college to improve their economic prospects. It is this switch from the liberal arts to pre-professional training that leads to the absurdity of encouraging everyone to go to college.
The problem is not simply the waste of resources involved. The system does positive damage. There is intense competition for the chance to study where the current academic norm is best fulfilled. What the school system teaches is competitiveness in the pursuit of a goal that has little value for most people. Since in competition of this sort the majority fail to attain their goals, not only do they learn competitiveness, but they learn that they themselves are failures.
The present absurdity is the consequence of the dominant ideology fostered by capitalism. I call this economism. In an economistic society, the only shared value is monetary. The goal of each individual is to gain as much wealth as possible. Free competition for wealth is understood to generate the greatest total amount of wealth.
There still remains a tension in the system.The quest for wealth has not eradicated the quest for knowledge. This is not a flat opposition. Some forms of knowledge contribute greatly to wealth. Hence institutions devoted to research fit into the capitalist system. But whereas research universities were originally created to produce knowledge in all fields, the interest of capitalists is limited to a few. The teachers socialized believe in research for its own sake. But the capitalist context of value-free research is in fact limiting the areas in which research will be pursued.
Schools increasingly are funded by states on the assumption that they contribute to the economy of the state. This judgment is expressed in distribution of funds within the university. Research is highly regarded if it brings money to the university. Most of this research is for military, industrial, and medical purposes. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is becoming knowledge for the sake of military power and economic gain on the part of the rich.
We have on the one side teachers who have been socialized to regard research as the highest human activity. They measure their success largely by the students they recruit to become researchers in their field. On the other hand, the great majority of their students are in class in order to achieve economic success. And the funding of the university is for its economic benefits. The disconnect is massive.
III. Return to Sanity
Actually, the logic of capitalism will restore a kind of sanity to the situation. We are giving less and less support to any schooling that does not contribute to the economy. As it becomes clear that a college education does not insure a better income, fewer youth will choose to pay the cost. Schools that prepare people directly for jobs will grow in importance. And, of course, much more schooling will be done through the internet.
It will become even clearer than it now is that in the present capitalist society, schools exist only to serve the economy. The question of whether society needs schools for any other purpose will then be inescapable. Postmodernists hope the question can be discussed now.
The first question is whether society has any needs other than economic. The second question is whether schools would help to meet these needs.
For a constructive postmodernist the answer to the first question is obvious. The economic order should be in the service of society rather than dominating it. The need is to bring into being an ecological civilization. That requires different skills and knowledge from those that contribute to a capitalist economic system. For example it requires that we learn how to live harmoniously with one another and with the rest of the natural world. This is quite different from learning how to compete for ever more limited resources and opportunities.
Learning how to create and live in an ecological civilization would seem to require public schools more than does preparation for particular jobs. With very young children even now schools are often places where they learn to get along with one another. School could be a place where teamwork in solving real problems could be learned. Participation in groups that were not competing with one another but making distinctive contributions to a common goal could prepare youth for life in an ecological civilization.
Obviously some of what is learned now in public schools is needed for life in an ecological civilization. There are already experiments in helping children to understand and appreciate the natural context of their lives. This will be increasingly important for all. They will also need to learn how to select technology with much more focus on evaluating its contribution to ecological civilization.
Children will benefit from gaining early some sense of the complexity of society and how the many kinds of work it needs fit into the larger pattern. They can be encouraged to think that they will have a chance to make a contribution to the whole that expresses their gifts and interests. They can be helped to understand that all of these contributions are important, and though some may be more visible or highly paid than others, success consists in filling one’s niche well. This is not in competition with others but in mutual support.
If evaluation of students is needed it should be in terms of guidance toward reasonable goals and the progress made in that direction. Goals will include ability to make an economic contribution to society but also ability to help society as a whole to function in sustainable and harmonious ways. Teachers should be evaluated by the extent to which they help students to work creatively together and become ready to contribute to ecological civilization. They should also be encouraged to work together as a team to improve the culture of the school as a whole and its relation to the larger community.
If we turn to “higher” education, we need to reduce the evaluative tone of the term “higher.” Continuing longer in school is not an inherent good. But some of the needs of society may require more extensive preparation. Such a prolonged stay in school should be based on the interests of individual students and their aptitude for particular kinds of learning. Some will want to engage in types of research that will benefit an ecological civilization, and they should be encouraged to do so. The issue should not be ability to pay but matching the interests of youth with the needs of the wider community.
A postmodern school system requires teachers and there must be schools for them. A few of them will prepare to teach those who want to learn to do research. Most will prepare to teach those who want to contribute to an ecological civilization in a multitude of other ways. Others will learn how best to prepare people to perform specific types of work. They, like others in society will learn to think of themselves as making their distinctive and important contribution along with others whose support they need and whom they need to support.
I am, obviously, being utopian. Also I have ignored the positive role of some kinds of competition. For example, if several teams of students are assigned parts of the work needed to accomplish an overall goal, competition to complete a team’s part of the task and to do the best work may be healthy, and those who win in that competition may be collectively rewarded. However, given the present context, it is important to emphasize what is now largely missing. My main point is that our schools currently participate in leading our societies in the wrong direction. Simply helping them to do their job a little better or introducing marginal ways of meeting needs they now fail to deal with may be positive. But only a reconsideration of their proper goals and directing energy toward realizing those different goals will turn schools into a positive contribution to the current human situation.
